We started with a bit of orientation around the area, plus some washing and buying a few groceries. It was a great opportunity to interact with the Russian people that we encountered. They are very friendly. Whilst I have sung some Russian music, and know some Russian words, none of it is any help if you want to converse with someone, as all the words I know are from the Orthodox vespers and masses!
Funnily enough, one of the things we have noticed about the buildings here is that they all have the most enormous downpipes, about 25 to 30 cm in diameter. Yesterday, while we were out and about, there was a sudden storm for about 10 minutes, and the water was gushing out of all the downpipes onto the footpaths. We notice these things now, since we had the flood in our house a few years ago, and we see that the gutters and downpipes that are built in most homes in Australia are nowhere near adequate to get the water away quickly! We could learn a lesson from this!
Today’s mission was to visit St Nicholas Cathedral. It is a fabulous cathedral in turquoise and white and gold on the outside, and very opulent with lots of gold on the inside. I have attached a photo of the outside but we weren’t allowed to take photos inside, unfortunately. We planned to arrive when they were holding a service, and we stayed for over an hour. The Russian services go on for several hours, during which time there is lots of ceremony and music. There was a wonderful choir singing the Vespers, and the priests and bishops (if that is what the Russians call them) chanted through the service. One of the priests had the most wonderful bass voice and the music sung through the Vespers was typical of the Russian style of music for worship. At one stage, the priests and bishops processed down the nave to where we were standing, so we had about 30 minutes of the priests chanting right in front of us, and the choir responding from the other end of the cathedral.
We finally dragged ourselves away and walked to the Mariinsky Theatre where we will be going to a ballet tomorrow night. We wanted to make sure we knew where to find it so we can walk back there again tomorrow night. It is about 50 minutes walk from our hotel, so we will get lots of exercise tomorrow, as we plan to walk to see other things during the day!
